The Art Of Lost Causes
by FeathersMcStrange
Summary: Tempers and stress levels rise as the investigation into the death of James Gallagher sees partnerships divided and reordered, Hetty's constant manipulation reaching new extremes, and everyone in the LA pushed to the breaking point. By the time news of the long-overdue investigation into Hetty Lange spreads, nothing is ever going to be the same.
1. Rarity of Truth

Alright everybody, this is it. The fic that I've been dying to write since Raven and the Swans.

As I said in my first oneshot, if you're deeply committed to a version of Hetty who cares about and values her people enough to put their wellbeing above her own vendettas and secrets, this is probably not the fic for you.

This is for anyone who's ever looked at Hetty and wondered 'why in the HELL doesn't she have her own villain arc yet, she certainly deserves it'.

The story will follow three sets of characters, and though Sam and Kensi weren't really in this chapter, they will feature heavily in the next one as their plotline gets started.

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _Will wisdom we learn as our minds they do burn_  
 _All the ties to naivety and youth_  
 _To adults we grow and maturity shows_  
 _Oh the terrifying rarity of truth_  
 _As you turn to your mind and your thoughts they rewind_  
 _To old happenings and things that are done_  
 _You can't find what's past make that happiness last_  
 _Seeing from those eyes what you've become_

 _\- Bastille, 'Haunt'_

* * *

Looking back on it after, it's almost funny how normal things seem at the time. As far as G, Sam, Kensi, Deeks, and even Nell and Eric are concerned, on the day the James Gallagher case crosses their paths, nothing has changed. In the end, it only takes four days for things to never be the same again.

The weather since Jethro Gibbs' unexpected drop in visit and subsequent, equally abrupt departure has been unseasonably unpredictable by Los Angeles standards. The day itself dawns cool and clouded, though in all likelihood, the clouds will have dissipated under the relentless California sun.

In an unprecedented turn of events, when Eric calls everyone up to get briefed, the only portion of 'everyone' present is limited to G and Deeks. From the moment he sets foot on the balcony, Eric's expression has blown right past 'hesitant', surpassed 'reluctant', and crashed into downright unwilling. This combined with the double absence of both of their partners has G and Deeks deeply alarmed by the time the call is actually put out.

"Shouldn't we wait for, uh, for Sam and Kensi?" Deeks hedges when Eric awkwardly gestures towards ops. Eric, at that, grimaces further.

"No, actually. Hetty says she wants you two up there now, and that she'll explain when she sees you."

Much as Eric seems uncomfortable with whatever it is that's going on, all three of them know better than to keep Hetty waiting, especially with how tense things have been with her in the past few days. Particularly where G is concerned, Deeks thinks, staring at the back of G's head as he follows the agent up the stairs. He's been avoiding thinking about the scene he and Kensi witnessed during the case involving Agent Grace, but it keeps surfacing whether he likes it or not. That confrontation wasn't exactly the kind of thing you just forgot about. It's going to stick with him for a long time, Deeks can tell.

Hetty and Nell are waiting for them when G, Deeks, and Eric reach ops. Nell carries the same nervous, reluctant appearance Eric does, and while Hetty just wears her usual look of imperturbable, unreadable solemnness, from the moment they set foot in the large, blue-washed room, G and Deeks are highly on edge. The notable absence of Sam and Kensi is glaring, and when added to the off-putting way Eric and Nell are acting, there can't be anything good about what Hetty is about to say.

"Where's Sam?" G asks, biting the bullet and launching the conversation immediately to his most obvious and pressing concern. "Why did Eric say you didn't want us to wait for him and Kensi, is this one extra time sensitive or something?"

"No, Mr. Callen," replies Hetty slowly, giving him a look. "This case is going to run a little... differently, I've decided."

Well. That doesn't sound reassuring at all to either G or Deeks.

"How do you mean?" Deeks' voice is guarded and he folds his arms across his chest, shifting where he stands.

"Just run it, Ms. Jones," orders Hetty, gesturing to the screen and ignoring Deeks' question entirely. Nell hesitantly complies.

"Research Analyst James Gallagher, twenty-four years old, he was found dead at Camp Pendleton last night. Shot, once in the leg, once in the chest." With a click of a small remote, up pops a set of blood smeared photographs. The young man dead in the pictures is dark haired, and brown-green eyes stare out into the distance, sightless and clouded. "From the photos, it's clear to see he was shot in the leg first, then attempted to escape. He got about ten feet before the shooter finished him off."

G nods along slightly, eyes raking over the picture of the swaths of red dragged across the floor, culminating in the place where James Gallagher was felled by the second bullet. It appeared that whoever had killed him had, in all likelihood, stood and watched as Gallagher tried to save his own life, giving him several seconds to struggle agonizingly across the floor before ending it. That thought isn't a pretty one, and the level of cruelty involved makes G shudder. A glance beside him shows Deeks to be similarly bothered. They've both seen a lot on this job and on previous ones, but the terrible things humans are willing to do to one another still manages to shock them sometimes.

"Alright gentlemen," Hetty announces, looking at G and Deeks. "It's your job to figure out what happened to poor Mr. Gallagher. The murder was committed in a keycard locked building, which means either someone found another way in past security, or his killer worked for the navy and has access to the top secret intel project he was working on. I don't think I have to impress upon you how important it is we catch whoever is responsible quickly, given the sensitive nature of the information analysts such as James Gallagher routinely handle."

"I'm sorry," cuts in Deeks in a voice indicating he is anything but. "What bout Sam and Kensi, though? Are you trying to teach them some kind of lesson about coming in early by making them get the details on the case from us later, or?"

Nell cringes and Eric won't look at anyone. Cataloguing this, G turns to Hetty, stance going abruptly confrontational, as it has so often in recent days.

"Hetty," he starts, only to be interrupted by the woman herself.

"Mr. Hanna and Ms. Blye won't be accompanying the pair of you to Camp Pendleton."

The reaction from G and Deeks is instantaneous and overwhelmingly negative.

"What?"

"Why?"

"That doesn't make sense."

"What's-"

"Hetty-"

"That's quite enough. I've made a decision and despite how you may act, as your superior at this office I do actually have the right to do that without your go ahead. Now, I don't have to justify my reasons for my decisions to you to head for Pendleton right away. Time is of the essence!"

With that set of instructions and admonishments in place, Hetty gives one last appraising glance around the room before turning and walking purposefully out.

It's a testament to how completely thrown he is by all this, G thinks, that Deeks doesn't immediately make a crack about the two of them being partners. Luckily for Deeks, really, as G is in the opposite of a joking mood. Sam has been even more of a grounding presence as of lae, keeping G's head above water in the aftermath of his confrontation (for lack of a better word) with Hetty. Since then, for some reason it has felt like the earth is slowly tilting off its axis, and the sudden disorienting shift from G-and-Sam and Kensi-and-Deeks to G and Deeks starting a case with Sam and Kensi nowhere to be seen... It's disconcerting, to say the least.

With Hetty out of arguing distance, and it being pointless to argue with her in the first place, G turns back to where Eric and Nell are wearing twin concerned looks, standing by the big screen.

"Finish running it," he says, probably sharper than he'd meant to. Though a look of concern flashes quickly across her face, Nell complies quickly, turning to the screen.

"The only calls or texts on Gallagher's phone were either to his boss or two people logged in his contacts as 'C' and 'K'. We're working on tracking down those numbers now, but they're both out of state, one with a Duluth, Minnesota area code, the other from Lansing, Michigan. The project open on his computer was shut down automatically on a timer after he didn't respond for a certain amount of time, so we didn't get a look at it before the encryption kicked in. However, records indicate it was copied onto a USB drive at what is estimated to be shortly after the time of death. I've sent the address for where he was staying to your phones, and if you get started you can be there before the worst of the traffic hits."

Finishing her spiel without a single mention of Hetty or her bizarre order for G and Deeks to leave their partners behind and head for Pendleton together, Nell falls silent, standing with her ahnds clasped in front of her, expression speaking of poorly masked nerves. G takes a couple steps closer to her and Eric, looking at her intensely.

"Nell, do you know something?"

"I know a lot of things," she answers with a stiff voice that has canted higher in pitch.

"You know what I mean. What the _hell_ is up with Hetty? She tells you things she'd never tell the rest of us, not even me, and if you know something, then-"

"Something's wrong." Nell's rushed admission spills quietly out seemingly before she can find the willpower to hold it back. "I don't know what, not exactly, but Hetty keeps getting calls from Director Vance." Her voice is tiny and soft, speaking low with a meaningful look at the monitors around them. The translation of that look is plain as day.

Be careful what you say. The walls have ears.

It's common knowledge that Hetty has the entire office bugged, though when Kensi had first casually mentioned this, Deeks thought she was bullshitting him. There are a lot of oddities about the way Hetty runs this place, things everybody seems totally used to that threw Deeks for a loop when he started there. Over time he supposes he's grown as complacent and used to it as Sam, G, and Kensi have, but there are still moments where he feels like he's stepped into the Twilight Zone and he's the only one who can see what's wrong.

The surveillance all over the office, so no one knows when Hetty is listening in, no conversation ever private, is one of those things. Hopefully Nell's hushed comments have escaped notice. Mentally tallying how long it'd take her to get back to her office and weighing that against the likelihood that she would choose to be monitoring this room at this precise moment, Deeks cringes.

Finally, Deeks' anxious paranoia that someone is _listening_ gets the better of him, and he steps up next to G, looking from him to Nell and back.

"Can we talk about this later?" he hisses. "Preferably _outside of the building_?"

His words cause Nell, Eric, and G to stop still and look around the room. Nell nods and turns off the projection. Together, G and Deeks head downstairs towards where their cars are parked, ready to get going, but both wanting to speak to their partners before leaving for Pendleton. But when they reach their desks, Sam and Kensi are still nowhere to be seen.

"Better hurry, gentlemen," comes Hetty's calm voice from not too far behind them. "I will inform Sam and Kensi of their role in the investigation when they get here." Her tone leaves no room for argument from either of them. With one last look back at his desk and Kensi's empty one, Deeks scrambles to follow G out of the building.

"So, whose car are we taking?" he asks, trying to sound as bright as possible in an attempt to preserve some normalcy among the turbulence that has hummed in every interaction since that fateful fight between Hetty and G.

G gives him a look. "I'll drive." His words are clipped and a little strained, and Deeks holds up his hands, relenting immediately and following him towards the other man's car.

"Alright, alright. Sure."

"Just as they swing out onto the street, Deeks catches a glimpse of Kensi's car, and moments later Sam's as well. Just for a blink of a second, Deeks' eyes lock with Kensi's then it's over, and she's gone.

"How soon do you think our phones are gonna start ringing off the hook, huh?" Deeks asks, and is rewarded for the jab at their respective partners' habits of worrying – to them what seems excessively – by a soft puff of a chuckle from G. Above them, only a few slight wisps are all that remains from the clouds of that morning.

Looking out up into the bright blue sky, Deeks is struck by the feeling that, despite the clarity of the day, there is a storm coming.


	2. Something's At Work Here

So this is. Late. This chapter is the promised focus on Kensi and Sam, ft. bonus Nell and Eric. These are the other two duos that the storyline is gonna follow. So, to recap, G and Deeks, Sam and Kensi, and Eric and Nell. Last chapter was G and Deeks, the other four are here, and next chapter we bop back over to the first two.

Thanks for your patience, please leave me a review if you have thoughts!

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _There's something at work here  
There's something at work here  
_ _There's something at work here  
_ _Chalk circles all around your body  
_ _Shiftless inside your guile  
_ _Will lay the card  
_ _That tears apart  
_ _What used to be your life  
_ _\- The Twilight Singers, 'Be Invited'_

* * *

The moment Sam pulls to a park behind Kensi, he's out of the car and headed towards her. She meets him half way, and they both start talking at once.

"Was that-"

"Did you see-"

They both stop dead, staring at each other and wearing identical concerned, confused expressions.

"What were Deeks and Callen doing leaving together in Callen's car?" Kensi asks. Sam shrugs helplessly.

"I don't know, I haven't heard anything from G today. You?"

"Nothing from Deeks, no." She shifts where she stands, folding her arms and frowning. "Something's off. They wouldn't just leave without telling us." Slowly, a look of angered realization creeps across her face. "Hetty."

"If anyone knows what's up, it's her," Sam agrees, and leads the way into the building, walking directly over to Hetty's desk with Kensi shortly behind him.

Neither Sam nor Kensi are impressed by or happy with Hetty's instructions to work together while Deeks and G traveled to Pendleton for their half of the investigation. However, much as she had done with G, Hetty hadn't taken kindly to being questioned about this. Even more so than usual, she shut down the first hint of an opinion that what she's decided isn't the best thing for the team and ordered them both out of her office and to work.

Meeting back by their desks, Sam and Kensi look at each other in a thick, uncomfortable silence. They are relieved of the responsibility of coming up with the words to ask each other just what the hell exactly is going on here when Nell and Eric show up.

"Did Hetty bring you up to speed on the case?" Nell asks, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

"Yeah," says Kensi, frowning. "Did you get a chance to talk to Deeks and Callen before they left? Did they tell you why we're all being split up like this?"

"We had... a few moments of conversation, yes."

The longer they stand there, exposed in the open area of the ground floor of the building with Hetty's office just near enough for just how good her hearing actually is to be a question worth considering, the more antsy Nell and Eric both look. Taking this in and quickly noting the source of their anxiousness, Kensi makes an executive decision.

"Well," she says, faux-brightly, earning her strange looks from her coworkers. "I don't know about you three, but I could use a cup of real coffee. There's nothing we can do on our end until Deeks and Callen get to Pendleton, and that'll be another two hours at least, so I say we have time to grab some drinks and maybe a bite to eat. Anybody else want to join me?" It's the pointed look on her face when she makes eye contact with all three of them in turn that prompts Sam, Nell, and Eric to all agree and follow her out the door.

The coffee shop Kensi leads them to is about a block and a half away from their office, a nondescript little place with more privacy afforded at its corner booths than most shops have. It's practically empty, which Sam counts as a plus. He orders first then settles into his chair with his back to the far corner, able to see every inch of the dimly lit room from his vantage point. One by one, he watches Kensi and the two analysts order then follow him over to their table. There's a beat of silence after all four of them are seated wherein they all seem to be waiting for someone else to say something first. Obviously this plan goes a whole lot of 'nowhere', and eventually, Sam takes the initiative, turning to Nell and Eric intently.

"So? Did you talk to them before they left?"

Nell and Eric exchange a look, and Nell answers.

"Well. Sort of?" At Sam's 'seriously, get the point, I'm starting to get impatient' look, Nell shifts in her seat and is about to start talking again when the barista approaches the table, carrying a tray with four drinks balanced on it. An uneasy silence lays over their group until the young woman finishes unloading and leaves, prompting Nell to start talking again.

"I tried to tell them what was going on but I couldn't say anything about it in the building, and before we could talk to them outside of it, Callen and Deeks had to leave for Pendleton."

"Wait, why couldn't you tell them inside the building?" interrupts Kensi, more confused than ever. The way she sees it, the longer Nell talks the more questions and the less answers she has.

"Well cause if Hetty overheard us telling other people about it, then me, Nell, you two, Callen and Deeks, we'd probably all be out of a job, and then assassinated in a clever yet discreet-"

"Eric!"

The blond tech raises his hands placatingly. "Sorry, I take it back. Probably not assassinated. The fired part, though, that stands."

"What do you two know that Hetty wants kept a secret so bad you think she'd fire us all if we knew about it?" Kensi demands, thoroughly finished with not knowing what's going on.

Eric and Nell exchange a look before Nell speaks. "They're... They're investigating her. Hetty. They're investigating Hetty."

In an impressively – and possibly, under other circumstances, amusingly – coordinated move, both Sam and Kensi sit abruptly back, wearing identical expressions of shock, though for two very different reasons.

To Kensi, who views Hetty as such an untouchable monument, this out of the blue announcement has completely thrown her.

Sam however is surprised not by the news of the investigation itself. Certainly not when it had been him that initiated it to begin with. No, what surprises Sam about Nell's information is how fast the proceedings have got underway. When he and Michelle had told Jethro Gibbs about what was wrong here, when they asked for his help in saving G and everybody else they knew from Hetty Lange, Sam hadn't really expected anything to happen, much less this soon.

Except that Nell knows about it, so something has happened. Is happening.

Not wanting to betray just yet that he knows more about this than any of the other three people around the table would possibly guess, Sam schools his face carefully into a mask of confusion and takes a drink of his coffee.

"Can you elaborate?" he asks, setting it down and folding his arms, leaning against the table.

"Yeah, what the hell does that mean?" Kensi demands, considerably less calm about all this than Sam is, probably due to the surprise announcement being an actual surprise to her. "If that's what's got her acting so weird- weirder, you really need to tell us everything. This could put Deeks and Callen in danger, Nell, if Hetty's not on top of her game-"

"I'm getting there!" Nell interrupts, her voice rising up into a near-shout.

Silence. Sam and Kensi stare at the young woman in concern while Eric mainly just looks like he wishes he could get up and run. Nell shifts and fidgets and breathes too fast, and Kensi shoots a glance towards Sam, wondering if they're going to need to call an ambulance, or if Nell is about to have a panic attack, or of she's just going to detonate .

(Something about all of this, this whole situation, everyone in this circle, feels so explosive to Kensi, feels so much like a bomb.)

"Just..." Sam says slowly, patiently. "Just start at the beginning. It's alright, Nell, just tell us what happened with Hetty. Tell us what Hetty's done. From the beginning."

So Nell takes a deep breath and does exactly that. She starts at the beginning.

She starts with a few nervous, rambling sentences about beginning a new job, about her new boss who seems to take a shine to her right from the beginning. A woman who knows things about things, dangerous things that no one asks questions about because why pull back the shades and shine light into the shadows when Hetty has it all taken care of. Nell's voice takes on a slight tremble when she speaks vaguely and distantly about projects she worked on once upon a time because Hetty asked her to, because that boss who likes and trusts her so much made a special request, 'if we can just keep this between us, Miss Jones'.

As Nell's soft voice goes on, Eric staring down at the scuffed finish of the table, Kensi and Sam start to think. They think about Hetty Lange, about the thousand tiny little ways she crossed lines every day, wound her fingers through the puppet strings of their lives andpulled , things they could never afford to spend two seconds considering the implications of before.

"It was me," Sam says finally, breaking the silence. Every head in the room swings to look at him where he has sat mostly silent throughout Nell's laying out of the investigation's focus, right up to the wall they'd hit regarding the source of the inquiry to begin with. "I started the investigation into Hetty. Actually, Jethro Gibbs started it, but he did it because I asked him to."

Despite the solemn nature of the their secretive cafe meeting, Sam spares himself a half a second to bask in having stunned all thee of them into silence.

"Why?" asks Kensi when she gathers her wits back about her enough to form coherent words. "When? Why ?"

"I'm sorry did you not just hear everything Nell was saying? Something scary is going on here and whatever it is, Hetty is right at the middle of it. She's a dangerous person, and someone needs to do something about it, especially after that weird crap I dug up about the similarity between some of Hetty's personally handpicked agents and Callen," Eric says, looking like he regrets saying it moments after the words leave his mouth, but bulldozing right on anyway. "There's too much correlation between those files for it to be a coincidence, even if I believed in coincidences, which I don't, and then what you and Deeks overheard between him and Hetty? I don't know what the hell is going on there and yeah, if it's innocuous, we'll all lose our jobs and I maintain we might totally get whacked, but to me at least? That'll be worth it on the off chance we're not wrong, and Hetty is up to some messed up stuff."

Nell looks like she's about to be ill, but nods along with what Eric is saying. For her part, Kensi looks like a beehive has just been cracked open right in front of her face. Sam just looks like he always does when backed into a corner and considering his options.

"We need to tell Deeks and Callen," Kensi says after a while, looking up from her coffee around at Sam, Eric, and Nell. "They should know about this, if they don't already." Nell shakes her head, indicating that no, as far as she's aware, the only people who know about it are around this table. Kensi nods, having figured as much, and turns to face Sam specifically. "Speaking of Callen, did you ever talk to him about what Deeks and I overheard the other day?"

Sam sighs. "Not really. He blew me off. Said everything was fine. You know him. G could literally be on fire and still keep insisting everything is totally fine."

That is going to have to be an issue tabled for another day, however. There are more immediate problems at hand, starting with the phone call to the missing half of the field team. Afraid that their absences en masse might be noticed if they all stay out too much longer, Eric and Nell have decided to head back to ops, run interference for Kensi and Sam if necessary. While they walk down the street, Kensi and Sam head to Sam's car, sitting there looking at each other for a moment before they make the call.

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Kensi hedges, folding her arms uncomfortably. Even though she is the one who brought up the idea of calling their partners to begin with, she now is unsure that's entirely advisable. "I mean, if they haven't killed each other already, do they need to be worrying about this on top of the case and whatever is going on with Callen. It might be more than they should be taking on at once."

"Would they ever forgive us if we kept it to ourselves?" counters Sam, it being clear that this is a rhetorical question, one they both clearly already know the answer to.

"Fair enough," says Kensi. "Alright. Your phone or mine?"

"Yours. If I know anything about him, G is driving, and I don't want to cause an accident."

Kensi pulls out her phone and dials Deeks' number, holding it up to her ear. It rings for a short time before he answers. Right in the very beginning, Kensi thinks she hears a near-silently muttered 'thank god' but she can't be sure.

"Hey, Kens," Deeks says brightly, though Kensi's level of familiarity with his mannerisms and vocal patterns tells her he's tense, on edge.

"I'm putting you on speaker, Sam's with me" Kensi tells him, pressing the button and holding the phone between herself and Sam. "Can you put yours on too? This is something we all need to discuss together."


	3. The Broken Ones

So I just moved into my dorm at my college for my freshman year. I moved 1700 miles for school which is why this didn't go up a couple days ago. Updates might be faster or slower than usual, depending on how my schedule works out.

(Also G might seem like a bit of a jackass here, but he gets over it quick, and he and Deeks won't be this awkward around each other for long. No worries, friends.)

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _We are not broken ones  
Just shattered pieces of the same bright sun,_  
 _Trying to figure out which way to run_  
 _And I can't do this alone_  
 _All I need is a good good friend_  
 _To get me through this  
_ _\- Cloud Cult, 'Good Friend'_

* * *

Kensi's phone call, to Deeks's point of view, can not have possibly come at a better time. The entire drive thus far has been amazingly uncomfortable, the air so thick with tension that Deeks bet he could've cut it with his pocket knife. Any and all attempts at making conversation with G, who sits stony faced in the driver's seat staring straight out at the road in front of them, end with either an annoyed look or a snarky jab, which is rude and standoffish, even for G.

Since the very beginning of Deeks's tenure with NCIS, there has been something off between the two of them, a discordant unease that seems to vibrate through the air like something alive and constantly agitated. Deeks and Kensi have talked about this before, the time he asked her why it was, exactly, that G seemed to actively despise him. Kensi had said he _didnt_ , it just seemed that way because they were too similar for their own good, but honestly, Deeks just can't see it.

Tapping the screen, Deeks puts his cell on speaker and sets it in the cup holder between the driver and passenger's seats with a dubious look over at where G keeps his eyes firmly on the road as he has for the past excruciatingly long – and dead silent – ten minutes.

"What's going on?" G asks, still white-knuckling the steering wheel, his bloodless knuckles just one sign of oh so many that all is not right in the world of G Callen. Deeks shrugs helplessly.

"No idea. Got Kensi on the line here, she wants me to put her on speaker so her and Sam can talk to us." Directing his attention back to the phone, Deeks folds his arms and raises his voice a little, speaking towards the device. "Alright Kens, you've got both of us. Have you guys figured out what kind of game Hetty thinks she's playing with this little round of Musical Partners?" He thinks he hears a snort of laughter from Kensi's end of the line, but it could've just been static.

"Not exactly that, but we have some... News?" It sounds almost like she's asking them a question when she says it. "Some _news_ about Hetty."

There's a note of something in Kensi's voice that makes Deeks's skin crawl. "Way to be unnecessarily not to mention unnervingly cryptic and vague. Can you tell us what it _is_?"

(The fact that G has said a total sum of nothing during the entire phone call does not escape Deeks's notice for a moment, and frankly, it makes him nervous as hell. Though, to be fair, pretty much everything that G has done during the past, oh, week and a half has made him nervous as hell.)

"I'm participating in an internal investigation into Hetty, lead by Jethro Gibbs," Sam cuts in, this time copping to his involvement in the investigation straight off the bat. To a point, at any rate. He doesn't exactly think it would be useful right now to outright announce 'hey, G, you know your mentor, the woman who – from your woefully misguided point of view – has done nothing but take care of and look out for you for god knows how long, I asked an old friend of yours to investigate her and find something we can use to get her out of here and far away from you, because I think what she's doing is not only illegal, but morally wrong and liable to end in your death, little though you may actually give a damn about that last bit, which is nothing short of terrifying to me on a daily basis, by the way'.

Yeah, something tells Sam that wouldn't exactly go over well with G.

"You're doing _what_."

Somehow, the fact that G is now actively participating in the conversation doesn't make Deeks feel any better about the situation than he did before, especially given the flat, cold tone he spoke in.

"I know how you feel about Hetty, G," Sam says, trying to head this thing off at the pass, "and I understand to a point, but even you have to admit that a lot of the stuff she does, it just isn't right. Especially recently. You have to see where this came from. This investigation is _not_ without cause, and it isn't part of some vendetta someone has against Hetty. There is basis for this." A few beats of uncomfortable silence pass slowly, seconds trickling by until Sam pulls the trump card, the one he hates using but knows will get his point across. "Don't you trust me?"

"Excuse me?"

"I mean it, G. Do you or do not not _trust me_?" Sam asks again.

"You know the answer to that." At the sound of Sam's dissatisfied silence, G sighs uncomfortably, acutely aware of both Kensi and Deeks listening to every word of this conversation. "Of course I trust you," he mutters quietly. If there is one person he'd have thought that would go without saying with, it's Sam.

"Then trust me when I say this investigation is very, _very necessary_." If that doesn't stave off the inevitable argument at least until the end of this case, nothing will.

With another irritated, uncomfortable sigh, G nods, despite the fact that Sam can't actually see him. He'll concede there may be a point there, and is willing to drop it. To have Sam this rattled, something serious must be going on with Hetty, and besides, it's not like the investigation is going to _find_ anything. Sure her methods are a little unorthodox, her manner frustrating, but that's not _wrong,_ that's just _Hetty_. Right?

"Did you guys figure out why she split us up like this?" Deeks asks, in an effort to divert the line of discussion away from that minefield of a topic and simultaneously get a rather pressing question answered.

"No, we didn't," answers Kensi, also relieved to move the discussion away from the investigation. Honestly, she really hadn't been expecting the news to go over as well as it has with G. She'd been anticipating a much bigger reaction, but then, she supposed, Sam's entire point just there had been to minimize the impact. "I'm not sure she really has one."

"If she doesn't have a reason, why would she do it?" This whole situation is endlessly frustrating to Deeks who doesn't really understand a bit of what's going on. First he gets sent off with G, then seems to press every single wrong button he can when talking to G, and now his partner is acting really, _really_ weird and talking about an internal investigation into his boss, a woman who, for all intents and purposes, has always seemed more than human, untouchable by things like _IA._

Frankly, Deeks has never been entirely sure what to make of Hetty Lange. She seems rather like a benevolent dictator most of the time, emphasis on the benevolent, but lately something about her has struck him as off, especially after the situation with Grace.

A history of undercover work has put him in close proximity with lying and liars and half lies and lies of omission for extensive periods of time, often with himself as the perpetrator, but despite this, Deeks is not overly fond of people who keep secrets.

It is not necessarily the act of the keeping of secrets itself that bothers him, but more doing so when it is completely unnecessary. Most good leaders he has met in his life and his career in law enforcement have made it a personal policy to keep everyone involved with things as informed and up to date on the facts as possible without breaching protocol or putting someone's life in danger. On the flip side of things, Hetty seems to operate on exactly the opposite principal. She keeps all her cards so close to the vest they may as well be sewn into the lining, and only gives her people just enough information to keep them alive – and sometimes, apparently, not even that much.

It's up to her discretion as head of their department, Deeks supposes, what to tell and who to tell it to, but it doesn't speak well to the type of person she is. Like the bugs in the office, which Deeks is almost completely sure are probably a major violation of some sort of important law or other, outside of being just plain invasive and creepy.

Not that anybody is going to call her on any of it, if past truly is prologue. Nobody ever has before. Except, perhaps, for this time. This investigation just might crack open some ugly truths about the way things work in Los Angeles. About Hetty Lange.

The heat has finally been turned up and that is, personally, Deeks's theory on why Hetty has split them up. Maybe she thinks it's Kensi and him who are behind the investigation and she wants to keep them apart. Maybe she knows it's Sam and wants to knock him out of sorts by disturbing the usual way of doing things. Maybe she's just feeling the pressure and has vindictively decided to set everybody else's worlds as sideways as hers feels.

Whatever her specific reason, Deeks is now positive that the investigation is the source of their current predicament. Not that he's about to _say that_ , not out loud, and not with G Callen sitting next to him and in control of the vehicle hurtling them both down a long, flat stretch of highway. Contrary to popular belief, he does in fact possess a sense of self preservation. So instead of voicing his theory, he keeps his mouth shut and waits for Kensi's.

"I don't know," is what his partner's phone-distorted voice says, which leads Deeks to believe that Kensi has carefully considered the facts, and their experience with Hetty, and come to the same conclusion he has.

"Me either," adds Sam, and Deeks nods. So they're all in agreement, then.

Well, all save for G, he thinks, looking at the driver's face and cringing at the thunderclouds gathered across G's brow. If he hadn't been in a foul mood before he certainly will be now, and Deeks is _not_ looking forward to that.

Finding nothing else for it, and growing tired of the extended silence, Deeks picks up the phone, turns it off speaker, and holds it up to his ear.

"Thanks for the heads up," he says, trying for a casual yet appropriately somber tone. "Keep us updated?"

"Yeah, of course," is Kensi's reply, though he hears a note of reluctance in it, like she isn't sure that's a good idea. No matter, though. Kensi is a woman of her word, and if she says she'll relay any information she gets, she means it. It's one of the things Deeks appreciates the most about her.

"We'll call you if we get any leads."

"Us too."

With that, the call is over, and Deeks is once more left with the dilemma of what to do with a long drive and no one but an agitated, irritable G Callen for company.

There exists, within Marty Deeks, a deep urge to fill silences. Something about a long stretch of wordless air makes him deeply uneasy. Call it paranoia, call it prior experience, but so bothered is he by silences, especially ones wherein the other person is or seems to be angry at him, that he can't help but try and fill them. Unfortunately, G is nearly the opposite from him. When things get rough in a personal sense, he shuts down and shuts up, at least around anybody whose name doesn't start with 'Sam' and end with 'Hanna'.

The end result of this combination is G sitting in stony silence punctuated only by the occasional sharp retort while Deeks tries and fails to start a conversation, literally any conversation, both of them growing increasingly frustrated with the other.

"So about the investigation into Hetty," Deeks says, and instantly regrets it. For a split second, he considers exactly how bad off he would be if he opened the door and jumped out of the car before G could twist around in his seat and punch him in the jaw, thereby crashing the car and killing both of them.

As G gears up to respond, Deeks silently prays that his death will be as quick and painless as possible.

"Deeks," G says slowly and evenly. His voice is ice cold and razor sharp.

"Yes?"

"Drop it."

Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"You can't possibly be that oblivious," Deeks insists, barreling right down one of the worst wrong turns he has probably ever taken in his life. "You can't _possibly_ not see why they're investigating. Honestly I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner. The kinda stuff she pulls, Callen? Can you honestly say that, were it anyone else, they wouldn't already be fired and in _prison_?"

"Deeks if you know what's good for you, you'll stop talking _right now_ ," snaps G, knuckles creaking under the strain of his ever-tightening grip on the steering wheel.

Now, it's Deeks's turn to get angry. "Look, I don't know what the hell your problem is, and I understand that you're under a lot of stress right now, you're going through a lot and I _get that_ , I was there for your blowout with Hetty, remember? So I _get it,_ especially after what we just heard, but you can't just growl and glare and yell your way through your day and expect other people to just sit there and take it."

G is silent again after that, seeming taken aback by Deeks's sudden outburst and suitably chastised by what he'd said.

As another one of those silences Deeks hates so much settles over them, he pulls out his phone, typing out and sending a quick text to Kensi.

[if i dnt make it back from this trip, callen killed me. srs tho, i'm worried abt him. smthn rly big def wrong. gonna see if i can find out what.]

 _This_ , thinks Deeks, smiling to himself a little, _is a spectacularly terrible idea. Let's do it. It's not like this can get any worse._

He is wrong.


	4. The Truth And Weight Of It All

College is going very well tbh, and it looks like I'm gonna have a lot more time to write fic these days! I appreciate y'all's reviews a lot, they really make me feel super appreciated and inclined to write more/faster.

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _Fail-safe trigger, lock-down call_  
 _Wipe the dry clean-slate, quick_  
 _Sound the alarm_  
 _No escape from the truth_  
 _And the weight of it all_  
 _I am caught in the web of a lie_  
 _\- All Time Low, 'A Love Like War'_

* * *

After Deeks and G's end of the conversation goes silent, Sam and Kensi remain sitting in Sam's car for a while longer, staring at the phone still in Kensi's hand.

"He took that better than I expected him to," Kensi says after a while. She is referring, of course, to G's lack of a major outburst upon hearing that not only is one of his oldest friends investigating Hetty, but Sam is deeply involved as well. Had Sam not immediately focused his efforts on defusing the conversation and at least postponing any anger or betrayal from G, that conversation might have gone very, very differently.

It's not like she would've blamed G for reacting like that. She can't imagine any of this is easy for him, and if her assumptions are correct, it's only about to get worse. Most of all, though, aside from worrying about both G and Deeks separately, she is deeply concerned about them in tandem. On the best of days, both can be complicated, difficult people to work with, and today far from counts as one of those.

"Do you think they're gonna be alright?" Kensi finds herself asking Sam, a not of anxiety creeping into her words. "You heard how they sounded, something's bound to go wrong, knowing them. Deeks doesn't exactly... Just, I don't think the way he responds to stress is something G is going to react to very well."

Thinking that over, Sam makes a face. He's got to admit she has a point there. Over the years he's gotten used to the idiosyncrasies of G when there's something bothering him, but despite how long he's been there, Deeks is still the new guy, familiarity wise. Kensi's partner knows her well, but G is a whole other story. Deeks means well. Sam knows he does. But he also knows that, aside from how little G believes in the concept of 'good intentions', intentions overall are going to mean very little to G right now. And once the two of them get going, it won't end well.

"It could be good for them to spend time together," is what Sam says, as opposed to the eight hundred concerns now floating around his head. "I think they could be good for each other."

Kensi snorts, raising her eyebrows at him.

"And so now happens to be the worst time for that." Sam shrugs, trying to be positive. "I don't they'll actually kill each other."

Which, really, is the best either of them can say for the situation. An alarming reality, if you ask Kensi. Just as she is thinking this, her phone goes off with a text from Deeks.

"Speak of the devil," she mutters, reading it and feeling her face fall impossibly further.

[if i dnt make it back from this trip, callen killed me. srs tho, i'm worried abt him. smthn rly big def wrong. gonna see if i can find out what.]

"What, who is it?"

Wordlessly, Kensi hands her phone to Sam. The look on his face when he reads Deeks's message would be funny under any other circumstances.

"I take it back. They might actually kill each other."

Seconds later, Kensi and Sam's phones both go off, one after the other, with a text from Nell.

[Hetty wants you both back here. Now.]

Exchanging a look, Sam and Kensi get out of the car and head inside. Hetty is waiting for them by their desks, looking less than pleased with them. Her arms are folded across her chest and her lips are pursed in a familiar 'you're about to get what's coming to you' sort of way.

"Mr Hanna, Ms Blye," Hetty greet stiffly. "I trust you had some truly pressingly important emergency to contend with? After all, you did leave for an extended period of time during an investigation, and immediately after I assigned it to you at that."

"We just called Deeks and G to touch base with them before we got started. I wasn't getting a good signal so we went outside," Sam lies smoothly, face completely impassive.

"Well I admire your foresight, however I'm sure that Mr Deeks and Mr Callen are more than capable of conducting an investigation without your guidance, and it's time for the two of you to notify Admiral Gallagher of his son's death." Hetty turns to go, walking back away towards her office.

As she leaves, Kensi watches Sam's expression melt from neutral into deep mistrust and a note of resentment.

Thinking about this interaction, going back and thinking about previous ones, about Marty Deeks and G Callen, Kensi suddenly feels sick. It's so obvious. It's like all this time, Hetty has been walking around, a wolf not even bothering with sheep's clothing, and Kensi has just nodded obediently and followed her right over the edge of a cliff.

"How did I miss it?" she whispers to herself, voice little more than a breath. "How didn't I see it?"

Now, Sam's face is creased with empathy and regret. He shakes his head, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets.

"She's good, Kensi. She's the best," he says, looking evenly at his friend and teammate. "Don't get down on yourself about it. She had all of us fooled, we all believed it. Believed her, believed in her. This isn't your fault."

"You saw it. You're doing something about it." Kensi's voice contains small threads of awe, maybe even jealously. "I don't know if I could've done what you did."

With a heavy breath, Sam sits down at his desk, looking at the folder on it not out of any particular interest in the folder itself but more because it happens to be the option preferable to eye contact.

"Honestly, if it weren't for Michelle, I would've thought it was all in my head. She's the one who told me that doing something about it was the right choice to make." Sam flicks the file folder with his thumb. "I don't know how this was allowed to happen in the first place."

"Dangerous people are put in positions of power every day," says Kensi, sitting heavily down on her chair and resting her forehead on her arms, crossed on her desk. "This is such a huge mess..." She can't help but think about Deeks's text, the trouble he's having with G. "Deeks sounded weird on the phone." Her voice is muffled by her sleeves.

"Yeah, G too." All of a sudden Sam finds that this course of discussion is getting them a whole lot of nowhere fast, and is more somber than is useful right now. "So, Admiral Gallagher?"

"Right," mumbles Kensi, picking her head up and opening the folder.

Admiral James Gallagher Sr is not a kind looking man. His appearance is average enough, but there's something in the set of his jaw, the look in his eyes, that sends a chill up Kensi's spine. If there was is father above all others whose son's death she does not want to inform him of, this is the one.

"Phone call or in person?" she asks, already knowing the answer.

"In person. This isn't the kind of thing you say on the phone, not if you can help it."

She has to give him that one.

Kensi and Sam stand outside the Gallagher home for several minutes before kicking up the courage to knock. James Sr answers the door, and from the moment they make eye contact, Sam dislikes him. There's an air of hardness about him, an edge that Sam has only ever felt around a certain kind of person, the kind of person around whom he can see G get nervous, much as he may try to hide it.

In a move ingrained into him from his navy days, an automatic instinct to protect his team, Sam straightens to his full height and squares his shoulders, stepping marginally closer to Kensi.

"Admiral Gallagher," he says, trying to keep his face and voice neutral. "I'm Agent Hanna, this is Agent Blye, we're with NCIS."

"This is about my son, isn't it?" Gallagher asks, sounding almost bored. His face has taken on the twist of a sneer, contemptuous derision dripping from every pore. "Well, what has James gone and done now? Must be pretty serious if NCIS is involved, huh? Sell secrets, did he?"

At this, Sam is unable to keep his face blank, sending a surprised look at Kensi, who meets his eyes with the same expression on hers. Admiral Gallagher is a piece of work.

"No, sir, James hasn't done anything wrong. I'm afraid we have some bad news about your son. May we come inside? It might be better to have this conversation sitting down."

Gallagher folds his arms across his broad chest, frowning first at Kensi, then at Sam. "Just say it."

"We're sorry to inform you of this, but James has been killed."

There's a beat of silence, then Gallagher gives one sharp nod.

"I see," he says in blunt, clipped words. "Well. I appreciate the notification. When can I expect to be able to claim the body? The sooner I can arrange the funeral, the better."

"Admiral," Kensi says slowly, shooting another look over at her temporary partner. "I think maybe I was unclear before. James Gallagher Jr was murdered. Our colleagues are in Pendleton right now to carry out the investigation."

"Murdered?" Gallagher asks, eyebrows going up. "Over what?"

"We don't know yet." Kensi is speaking delicately, as if she is afraid that if she says the wrong thing in the wrong way, it will set the man in front of her off. "That's what our other Agents are doing in Pendleton."

"I knew that boy was never cut out for this," Gallagher mutters under his breath.

"Excuse me?" asks Sam, completely taken aback by this man's reaction to the news that his child has been killed. If it were Sam getting this news about his son... He can't even imagine it, but he knows that this is not what his reaction would be. There is no uniform, normal reaction to this kind of news, but he knows that his first words would not be to degrade his son's memory.

"Navy work, Agent Hanna. My son was..." The look on Gallagher's face is one as if he is tasting something sour. "He was always less than the man I raised him to be. In every way he failed to live up to my expectations, and it only makes sense that he would fail theirs as well." His next words are softer, a directionless mutter coming alongside the first hint of real sadness or grief. "What a waste."

There is an odd compulsion in Sam, a sudden urge to come to the dead boy's defense, but something tells him that pissing off Admiral Gallagher is not a useful course of action for him to take right now. The words that leapt immediately to his tongue, James Gallagher Jr's impeccable record, the fact that they have no idea if his job actually had anything to do with his murder, they will have to be bitten down to silence, in the name of finding the young man's killer.

A period of highly uncomfortable, heavy silence lays over the porch like a thick, suffocating blanket. After what feels like ages, Kensi shifts, forces the sickened look off her face, and addresses Gallagher with all the politeness she can muster. In her experience, men like this respond best when they believe they are being treated like the highly respected, important people they believe they are.

"Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your son?"

"No," the Admiral snaps, glaring at her. "Why are you asking me? Does it look like I knew every detail of James's life?" His voice lowers to a bitter, wounded mutter. "Boy would hardly have anything to do with me, the ungrateful, no good..."

As the words trickle off to silence, Sam bites his tongue to keep his opinion of 'I've known you for five minutes and I already don't blame him' to himself.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," Gallagher says, straightening his spine and holding his head high, putting him at a height advantage to literally look down on both of them. He must be six foot four at least. "I have a funeral to arrange." With a step back, one heavy hand closes the door, slamming it in Sam and Kensi's faces.

The walk back to Sam's car is silent and stunned as they both try to process what has just happened.

"So he's a suspect, right?" Kensi asks from the passenger's seat as Sam starts the car.

"Definitely."

About three quarters of the way back to the office, Kensi suddenly speaks again.

"I want to help."

Sam spares a quick look at her. "What do you mean?"

"The investigation into Hetty." Her voice starts out a little shaky but swiftly grows convicted. "I want to help. Whatever I can do. For Callen and for Deeks and for you and me and all of us. I want to help." She meets his eyes as they pull up to a stoplight. "Just tell me what I can do."

For a second, Sam's hand hovers over Kensi's then squeezes it tightly for a brief moment. Since the beginning, this process, trying to finally see consequences for Hetty's actions, has been a long and lonely road. Aside from Jethro Gibbs, Sam has been completely alone in this. To know Kensi has his back, that she's willing to do this dangerous, hard thing with him... It means more than he can say.

Moments like these, he thinks, you find out who your real friends are, and Kensi Blye is one of the truest friends a person could have. He only hopes that G will learn the same thing about Deeks. This assignment, this reordering of dynamics, during the worst of times and with the steepest of stakes, Sam knows that this will be what will make or break G and Deeks.

They either walk away from this as family, or it puts a chasm between them too deep and too wide for any hope of repair.

Sam hopes for the former, but he knows G, and though in a different way, he knows Deeks too. And in knowing them, he knows what could happen here. He knows they have good reason to be worried.


	5. All Dead Ends

So this is... shorter than usual and also not my favorite chapter of anything I've ever written, not to mention late as hell.

I tried to write this without like demonizing either of them, just know they're both dealing with some rough shit and kind of explode at the nearest convenient person.

Lemme know what you think, and you can always contact me at my tumblr, aromanticgcallen.

WARNING: Implied/referenced suicidal ideation

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _I heard they broke you_  
 _That you gave in_  
 _That you dropped_  
 _And the fight had left you_  
 _But don't you worry_  
 _Makes no difference_  
 _From the start_  
 _Your options were all dead ends_  
 _\- "Safe and Sound", Electric President_

* * *

It takes two hours of driving up the coast of California, following the jagged edge between land and the Pacific Ocean, for the situation between G and Deeks to reach critical mass and implode completely.

For a while, Deeks keeps it under wraps, only really speaking to comment on when to make a turn or take an exit. It's not like he doesn't realize how much talking could actively make this trip go from bad to worse to _terrible_ , but he genuinely cannot help it. The words just keep coming, anything to fill the horrible silence weighing so hard down on him. His whole chest feels tight, like there's something compressing his lungs, and he can't stand it.

Aside from that, though, there _is_ another purpose to his ill advised, unsuccessful attempts at dragging G into conversation, one to do with the man himself. Something in him hopes that maybe if he just tries hard enough, on this empty, painfully quiet car ride, he might finally be able to bridge this gap that exists between the two of them. Despite the air he tries to give off, the sense that nothing can possibly get to him, there's a part of Deeks that desperately wants these people to like him. It's easy with Kensi, everything seems to come easy with her, but it's different with Sam and G.

Even with Sam, though, they seem to have reached a kind of understanding, a mutual respect and even affection. No, it's only with G that Deeks still feels as if he's stuck on day one, never able to progress past that initial phase of uncertainty and mistrust, never knowing where they stand with each other.

So Deeks hopes that maybe now he might finally be able to move past that, earn some semblance of acceptance from G's guarded, suspicious perspective. Unfortunately though, it seems that this might be literally the worst time to make such an attempt.

The eruption comes when Deeks brings up the situation with Hetty again, in the middle of a long, deserted stretch of road.

"Seriously, man, we've gotta talk about Hetty," Deeks says after several long minutes of dead silence, broken only by the thrumming of wheels against sun-heated pavement. It's amazing how much this simple statement effects G's entire demeanor. Watching from the passenger's seat, Deeks sees a badly suppressed flinch ripple through him, his knuckles going ashen against the steering wheel. He says nothing. Deeks doesn't follow his lead, rushing forward and speaking again. "You've known her longer than any of us. What are you gonna do if someone approaches you about it, wants you to help, like, court martial her or whatever?"

"I don't know."

A response! Deeks counts that as a point in his favor and pushes harder.

"You'd have to help them wouldn't you?" he muses, frowning and thinking it over. "Like, you've seen her pull some _shit,_ you'd have to cooperate or they could arrest you or something, I think. This is one scenario I have to admit we didn't exactly cover in law school..."

"I don't _know._ " G's words are more forceful this time. Harder. Sharper. More panic in them. More fear.

"I mean you could always just claim mind control. 'Sorry, your honor, I can't speak to whether or not Hetty Lange has years and years of dangerous, morally questionable, scary shit to her name, I was totally under a trance the whole ti-'"

Deeks's monologue is cut off abruptly with a harsh twist of the car. G has given the steering wheel a sudden jerk, pulling the car off the road and jamming down on the brakes. The vehicle skids to a stop in a cloud of grey tan dust, set at a haphazard angle to the highway.

" _Deeks_ ," G shouts in frustration. He throws the car into park, and jerks the door open, stepping out onto the dry ground. Once sure the sudden swerve off the road definitely hasn't killed him, Deeks follows him.

"Callen..." Deeks starts cautiously.

"Stop!" When he yells the word, G's voice cracks and splinters. His whole body language reminds Deeks of a wounded animal. He looks hunted. Cornered. "Just _stop it_ , Deeks! Stop!" However, here G doesn't exactly take his own advice. "Why can't you take things seriously for _once_ in your life?" G breathes in great shuddering gasps, leaning down and bracing his palms on his knees before taking another step backwards, putting another foot of distance between them. Despite this, Deeks can see his hands shake. "For _once_!"

"Callen," Deeks tries again.

"It's like everything is a _joke_ to you, but this isn't a joke this is my life, these are people's lives. You show up with your wisecracks and your ridiculous haircut like you're some kind of high school class clown, you act like a goddamn _child_ , Deeks, and these are people's _lives_. Every _day_ we are handling people's lives and now it's _mine_ and is it too much to fucking ask that for two minutes you _grow up_?"

Several seconds pass in complete silence aside from G's ragged, rapid breathing. Deeks can't believe this is really happening, that G really just said that to him.

"Like I've got another choice?" The incredulous response splits the air with an acidic, razor sharp edge.

"What does _that_ mean?"

"What does it sound like? I don't have any other options, Callen. You cope with your shit your way and I'll cope with my shit my way. You're right, okay? We hold people's lives in our hands and that's some rough reality. If I don't find some way to cope the cracks will start to show and god help me if I make you all deal with that."

The mystified expression on G's face causes Deeks to bark out a laugh. He shakes his head in disbelief. Okay, now he's angry.

"Oh _come on_. I am the last person whose problems you want to deal with. You never even wanted me here in the first place, and that hasn't gone away, has it? I'm still just the same _temp_ to you, aren't I? A substandard placeholder until someone better comes along."

G looks up, his face wrinkled in utter confusion. "What the hell are you talking about? How many times have I risked my life to save yours?"

With a roll of his eyes, Deeks says something then that he wishes he could take back, even as the words leave his mouth.

"Come on, half the situations we walk into it seems like you don't _want_ to walk out of them alive, so somehow that doesn't seem to mean much."

From the way he reacts to this, you'd think G had been physically struck. He stumbles back a couple of steps, turning away from Deeks and bracing one trembling hand on the side of the car. Deeks stands staring at him while he sits down on the ground, falling backwards into the car and staring seemingly out into nothing. Once or twice he opens his mouth as if to respond to that accusation, that blatant questioning of his commitment to his own furthered existence. He finds nothing to say, however, no way to defend himself from such a challenge, especially when he doesn't want to think about whether or not Deeks has a _point_ here.

Regret hangs thick and heavy in the warm air, mingling with the smell of salt drifting inland from the ocean. Deeks sinks down next to G, leaning back against the side of the car.

"I don't know why I said that," mutters Deeks, not looking at G. "That was a shitty, shitty thing to say. Oh my god."

"I guess we're even, then," G says in a stunned voice, words falling past numb lips.

Deeks looks over to him at that, and they make eye contact, just staring at each other for a moment. There are only so many ways this could go, he thinks. After a second or two, G's mouth twitches, and a breathless, incredulous laugh bubbles from his chest. Deeks's head falls back against the car in relief and he finds himself laughing too. Nothing big or loud, no real humor in it, just two people who could have fractured the tenuous, fragile relationship between them and are amazed to discover they haven't.

G chokes on a slightly hysterical chuckle and shakes his head. He draws his knees up towards his chest and braces his forearms across them, not quite ready to leave this strange place in space and time, quietly sitting beside Deeks next to the dusty California highway. Before too long his mind drifts back to what started this all, what Deeks said in the car about Hetty, about what G might have to do. There is a choice here he might be forced to make, and it isn't one he even wants to think about.

However much like a gun pointed at one's face, a train barrelling inexorably down an ever-shortening track, it is becoming increasingly impossible to avoid thinking about.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," he says after a while, voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper.

Deeks's hand hovers just on the edge of his line of sight for a while before hesitantly settling just above G's elbow in a grounding, steady grip. No more words are exchanged between them, not so much out of a reluctance to speak but more because what can you say after that? Deeks's silence doesn't bother G, though. The touch is enough, both a small offer of comfort in an impossible situation and an apology for words that shouldn't have been spoken.

When G stands first, then turns around and offers Deeks a hand, pulling him to his feet, it is an apology for his own misspoken mistakes, for the wounds he caused without true malice behind them.

The drive continues on in quiet, with G focused on the road ahead of them and Deeks looking wordlessly out of the window.

They are nearly to Pendleton when he clears his throat and says, still looking out at the roadside scenery, "If it means anything, Callen, I think you're going to be okay."


	6. Everybody's Watching Me

[sighs]

Do I even really need to say it anymore? Yes? Ok. Sorry this is so... late haha... Anyway the important part is here it is knock yourselves out everybody! The good news is i've actually plotted out the rest of it so. It should go faster. Knock on wood.

Sorry if this chapter is kinda subpar, it was a struggle getting it to come out the way i wanted it to and i did eventually have to just call it good if i wanted to be able to post it at all.

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _I told you I would tell you everything you wanna know  
_ _You want me to tell you now  
You pressure me to shout it  
Need to hear about it  
Think that I will count you out_  
 _I let you find it on your own_  
 _Then I found myself alone_  
 _Uh oh, where can I go  
Everybody's watching me_  
 _\- "Everybody's Watching Me (Uh Oh)", The Neighborhood_

* * *

From the moment they get back, even the air feels different. Kensi stands by her desk and looks around, feeling the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Her world has been reordered and turned off kilter. It feels like people are watching her, like her every move is being scrutinized.

The status quo has changed, and Kensi Blye no longer knows what ground she stands on.

For the first time she can remember, the immense sense of power and weight she can feel in this building is not on her side. It is wholly and completely against her and that scares the absolute shit out of her.

Someone behind Kensi makes a noise and she jumps, whirling around sharply to see an alarmed looking tech raising her eyebrows at her over a pile of folders on the floor. She shakes off the residual fear pumping through her chest as best she can.

Normal, Kensi, she reminds herself. You have to act normal.

Sitting down at her desk and re-opening the James Gallagher file, Kensi tries to push the alarming feeling of danger out of her mind. Once upon a time, the space inside these walls felt like the safest place on Earth, the one place nothing could get to her. Now it just felt volatile. About to explode.

It's a surge of relief to look up and see Sam walk around and sit at his own desk. As they make eye contact and smile grimly at each other, Kensi wonders if he's as scared as she is. She also wonders how he's managed this whole time, alone in this building on his mission to take Hetty down.

"Feel weird?" Sam asks gently. His voice is low and soft, drifting across the table.

"That would be putting it mildly," admits Kensi in a whoosh of breath.

"Well, your day's about to get weirder," says Sam, looking at something above Kensi's head. He mouths 'sorry' at her before speaking to the person who has just approached them. "Hetty, I was just about to come find you. We got what looks like a pretty solid lead from the Admiral, we were going to go check it out after talking to you. Just wanted to keep you in the loop." Sam follows this up with a smile that appears so genuine it sends chills up Kensi's spine when she recognizes the note underneath it.

Sam is undercover. Sam is undercover while standing at his own desk in their office talking to their boss. And as she nods along in agreement with Sam's lie, Kensi realizes that now? So is she.

Before, this was the place plans were formed, the soft place to fall when an op got blown. Now, here they are in the middle of their own home base, undercover in the fox's den.

Hetty dismisses them with a few words and a careless wave of her hand, and Sam turns back to Kensi.

"Come on. We have a meeting we're gonna be late to."

"With who?" Kensi hisses, grabbing her jacket and hurrying to keep up with Sam.

"The Director."

And just like that, her day gets a whole lot weirder.

Leon Vance is waiting for them in a hotel room roughly a twenty minute drive away. NCIS's Director seems agitated from the moment Sam and Kensi catch sight of him. He doesn't display it overtly, but with their training it is plain as day that Vance doesn't want to be here. His head snaps up when they walk in and he shakes himself into the authoritative, professional posture he maintains in circumstances such as these.

"Agent Hanna and Agent Blye, thank you for meeting me here. I understand you're in the middle of an investigation and this is kind of out of your way."

"Whatever we can do to help," Sam says, meeting Vance's eyes steadily as if private conversations with the head of NCIS in hotel rooms are a thing he's perfectly used to. Kensi hadn't even known Vance was in the state.

The Director then takes notice of her, looking her up and down, cataloguing her anxious disposition, the slight fear in her eyes.

"Kensi Blye," Vance says appraisingly. He holds out a hand to her, and she shakes it. "I've heard good things. I appreciate how difficult this must be to do, and want you to know your efforts here won't go unrecognized. It's a brave thing, standing against someone like your boss."

The part of Kensi that still isn't wholly convinced this is anything approaching a good idea can't meet Vance's eyes. She dips her chin and tries to make her inability to hold eye contact look like respect. A shifting at her side draws her attention to Sam.

All it takes to remind her exactly why it is she's here is seeing the look on Sam's face.

"Are you ready to tell me everything you know about Hetty Lange?" Vance asks.

Kensi takes a deep breath and nods.

"Then let's set down, shall we?"

The longer Kensi speaks the more she thinks of to say. It's as if some kind of floodgate has opened in her mind and once she opens it, she is powerless to stop the flow of fact after chilling fact, pouring out to be met with the occasional question from Vance.

Somehow, before right now, none of this had quite seemed real. The idea of an official investigation from the top of the internal food chain centered on their office , an investigation into the indominable Hetty Lange... Despite how seriously she has regarded this until now, it hasn't quite seemed like it was actually happening until right this moment. Vance is taking notes . The things she is saying, the accusations she is making are being written down.

And then Director Leon Vance asks her if she is willing to testify.

"I'm sorry, what?" Kensi asks, the words shaken through her lips like grains of bitter salt fallen from a shaker that's been knocked over, grains that may be arsenic upon closer inspection.

"I doubt it'll come to that, but if it gets that far, I need to know who will swear to these things in front of a court. We're not exactly overflowing with physical evidence against her, and the sworn testimony of the two of you at least would go a long way."

Thinking over what this could mean for her, the potential consequences of agreeing to do this, the sharp stab of fear she feels at even the thought of it, Kensi slowly begins to nod.

"Yeah," she says, meeting the Director's gaze square on. "Alright. If it comes to that, I'll testify."

Vance nods. So does Sam.

"Good."

The meeting ends quickly after that, Vance sending them back on their way, sharing a few quick, quiet words with Sam on the way out. They walk back to Sam's car together without words. Kensi's brain is whirring at a frantic pace, trying to process what's going on. From amid all the speeding thoughts, one jumps out and sticks.

She wishes Deeks was here.

Make no mistake, Sam is wonderful. Kensi trusts Sam more than she can say, she loves Sam, but there's something about the easy way she and Deeks move together, the familiarity and comfort of his presence next to her, that is glaringly absent right now.

Push comes to shove, she's also sure Sam would choose G over her for back up without a moment's hesitation, and he would be right to do so. You work with the same partner day in and day out for a reason.

It's this line of thought that brings her to a question, one that's hovered – thus far formless – at the back of her mind this whole time.

"What about Deeks and Callen?"

Sam stops dead, reaching for the handle of the driver's side door. "What about them?" he asks cautiously.

"Are you and Vance gonna ask them to... Uh, to help? To testify?"

Pragmatically, G's testimony would be worth ten of theirs combined. Kensi knows it. Sam knows it. All of Hetty's most dangerous stunts, her most controlling invasion, her most questionable behavior, the brunt of it fell squarely on G Callen.

Pragmatically, G's testimony could do more than unseat her from her throne of unbridled power, it could put her in prison.

What that could do to G himself though... The thought makes Kensi feel sick. This isn't fair.

"I don't think it'll come to that," Sam says, echoing Vance. "I really hope it won't. But if it does, it'll be up to Deeks whether or not he wants to throw his lot in with us. This is Hetty Lange we're talking about here. We're not gonna makeanyone do anything. Since he's not really NCIS proper, Deeks might actually be at lower risk than the rest of us, but... It's up to him."

"And... And Callen?" Kensi is hesitant to push farther, but she wants to know what kind of fallout she should be prepared for. Deeks and G, they may tend to jump headfirst into things with all the righteous determination of a heavenly regiment, but she and Sam are a different breed. They like to be ready to deal with what's behind over when the dust settles.

Sam shakes his head, leaning against the car. "I'm not even gonna ask G. I can't do that to him."

Another truth known to both of them hangs between them in shared silence.

G would do it. If it was Sam asking, G would stand up and testify against Hetty. For no one in the world would he do that but Sam Hanna, even if it would destroy him to do it, and for this reason Sam knows he can't ask.

Kensi nods. She was hoping he would say that.

They get stiffly into the car together, the heavy atmosphere broken only when Kensi pulls out her phone and turns to Sam.

"We should call them. Tell them about meeting with Admiral Gallagher for the notification. Maybe some of James Gallagher's friends on the base will know about any trouble between Junior and Senior."

She says nothing about the fact that part of her just wants to hear Deeks and G's voices.


	7. Experts At The Fall

Same old dog and pony show I suppose: this is late late late. It took me like. Two weeks to write the last couple of paragraphs but now that we're through that, hopefully this will go faster, eh? I've got it all plotted out, and if all goes well, the last four chapters should be up in a more timely fashion.

I'm glad y'all still care about this, though. I definitely do.

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part Two – The Boiling Point

 _This one's for the lonely  
_ _The ones that seek and find  
_ _Only to be let down time after time  
_ _This one's for the torn down  
_ _The experts at the fall  
_ _Come on friends get up now  
You're not alone at all_  
 _\- "Comes and Goes (In Waves)", Greg Laswell_

* * *

There is a notable change in the atmosphere of the car ride after that. It's as if the tension between G and Deeks got bigger and bigger until the air was stretched like the skin of an overinflated balloon, and their roadside confrontation has taken a tent spike to it.

The unease of the situation with Hetty touches every atom of the car and those inside it, uncertainty and dull panic still stretched taut across G's shoulders, but at least now Deeks knows they stand on the same side of it. At least now there is clear air to breathe.

Sam and Kensi's second phone call comes after they have passed the Pendleton checkpoint. The office building where James Gallagher worked and was killed is only a five minute drive from where G pulls over when Deeks's phone starts ringing. Deeks answers and immediately puts it on speaker.

"Hey Kens, you've got me and Callen," Deeks tells her, the tone of his greeting lightyears away from the desperation in his voice the first time he answered the phone on this trip. When Kensi replies, her voice is different too. She sound shaky, and Deeks is worried.

If he wasn't worried, he would find the role reversal from their last conversation somewhat funny.

"Hey Deeks," she says through the speaker. "How's everything going?"

Deeks exchanges a look with G. He gets the feeling she's not asking about the investigation.

"Alright, actually. What've you got?"

"A lead, maybe," chimes in Sam. "We made the notification to Admiral Gallagher, our guy's father."

Picking up on the note in Sam's tone, G frowns. "And how'd that go?" he asks.

There's a silence, presumably Kensi and Sam looking at each other and trying to decide who should answer that. Eventually, Kensi's voice filters down the line.

"I was pretty sure Sam was this close to decking the guy."

"I should've done it, too," Sam tacks on in a dark grumble.

"You said you got a lead from him?"

"Sort of. He is the lead."

Noting the open discomfort suddenly displayed on Deeks's face, G makes the executive decision to handle the next couple of questions himself.

"So you think Admiral Gallagher could have killed his son?" he asks, a hint of doubt in the words.

"Yeah," comes Kensi's short reply after a beat of quiet. "The way he talked about James Jr wasn't pretty. I would buy Senior killed him."

"Dunno, something doesn't feel right," G mutters, mentally going over the facts of the case as they know them. "The building was keycard locked."

"He's an Admiral, I'm sure someone would've let him in if he didn't have specific access to that particular building."

"And what about the project he was working on? The computer shut down after he didn't respond but Nell said it was copied onto a USB drive that wasn't found at the scene. Can you think of any reason Admiral Gallagher would have for stealing that intel? A reason worth killing his son to get it?"

"We barely spoke to the guy for five minutes before he kicked us out and said he had a funeral to plan. According to him, James Jr didn't exactly tell his father a lot about his life."

From what I've heard, I really don't blame him, G thinks in an unconscious echo of Sam's thought upon meeting the man.

"Right. Well, we'll keep it open as an avenue for sure. Deeks and I will talk to people here, see if they can tell us anything about the Admiral, maybe someone's seen him here recently."

"Hey, have Nell and Eric made any progress on finding out who our dead guy talked to?" Deeks says, jumping back into the conversation. G shoots him a look, noting that he looks a little pale. His concern is dismissed with a shake of Deeks's head.

"Excuse me?" asks Kensi, confused.

"The contacts on his phone, the letters K and C?" Deeks elaborates, rolling his eyes and making a face at G.

G gets the feeling it's more in the name of making himself seem unbothered by the previous discussion of Admiral James Gallagher Sr than any display of genuine levity.

"They haven't said anything to us about it, but we'll check in with them, see where they're at. This constant running around, trying to figure out who knows what about what, it's exhausting. I like it better when we're all on the same page."

"You and me both, partner," Deeks agrees vehemently.

"Be careful." Sam's voice comes in an odd rush. "Whoever killed Gallagher- just. Watch yourselves."

"You can relax, Sam," G says with a hint of a smile. "It's all gonna be fine. We'll be patched in through ops the whole time, we'll be able to reach you right away if it goes haywire."

To say nothing of the fact that even if they have a direct link to home base, any help is over a hundred miles away. The only backup they're going to have is each other.

For perhaps the hundredth time since that morning, G wonders what the hell Hetty's game plan is, splitting them up and sending him and Deeks off alone like this. It makes no tactical sense. He immediately stomps that down, though. Even the thought of Hetty's name is taking his mind places he doesn't want to go.

"It'll be fine," he repeats out loud, as if saying it enough times and with enough conviction will wish it true.

After a round of goodbyes and promises to keep each other updated, Deeks ends the call and they head to their first stop, Research Analyst James Gallager Jr's former workplace.

Their credentials get them past the security checkpoint, where they are met by a tall woman with closely cut dark brown hair and ramrod straight posture. Her ID, clipped to the front of her pristinely press ironed jacket, identifies her as Jacqueline Lovett. When she greets G and Deeks, her handshake is brisk and firm. Looking her over, though, G spots a few details hinting she is not quite as put together as she gives the appearance of being. Her eyes are rimmed red, for one, and when she speaks, her voice is exhausted and subdued.

"Jacqueline Lovett, Head Analyst. I was the one who- I found Jamie last night." At G and Deeks's odd looks, she shakes her head, laughing weakly. "Research Analyst Gallagher. I am- I was his direct supervisor, my team works... worked very closely together. You get to know people."

Sam's warning to keep safe echoing in his ears, G nods.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he says quietly. A tremor runs through Jacqueline's tightly pursed lips.

"Thank you," she says. "I assume you have questions?"

"Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around the building specifically around... around Jamie?" G asks her, unsure what compelled him to refer to Gallagher that way. Usually he avoided referring to their latest victims by their first names, as – callous though it may be – it helped to maintain focus if you avoided thinking about the people those bodies had been. But this time it would somehow feel wrong to call James Gallagher by his last name to the face of this woman whose hands G can still see trembling.

"No, nobody I can think of. It's keycard locked – the building, I mean. You have to have a card or, in your case, a badge, to get in here. Anybody suspicious would set off alarms."

This only serves to further reinforce the assumption that whoever killed him, it was an inside job. Now whether that meant a coworker or maybe a family member or friend visiting for the day remains to be seen.

"Have you seen Jamie's father on the base lately? Admiral Gallagher, has he been around?"

This time the question draws Jacqueline's eyebrows high up her forehead. "TheAdmiral? Been around here?" She shakes her head. "I don't know what the Admiral has told you guys, but he and Jamie haven't spoken in months, and if Jamie had his way, they'd have never spoken at all. I worked with him..." Jacqueline trails off, her eyes growing distant and sad. "I worked with Jamie for four years, and I never once met the Admiral."

Deeks nods stiffly, and changes the subject. "I hate to ask this, but can you please show us to his work station?"

The woman wrests ahold of her professionalism quickly, giving a curt nod. "This way."

They follow her to a bank of elevators and G notes with mild interest that one of them is nothing more than an empty, dark opening with bright yellow caution tape stretched across it.

James Gallagher's former desk sits at the center of the tenth floor of a seventeen floor building, a relatively neat workspace that would have looked perfectly normal if it weren't for the slasher movie cast of red across the chair, carpet, keyboard, even the little yellow rubber duck perched by the darkened computer monitor. Thinking of the tech people he knows, G can assume James Gallagher had practically lived here.

And then, quite literally, died here. Almost poetic, in the way a senseless tragedy sometimes can be.

After this this morbid contemplation, G notices that Deeks has stopped in the doorway, surveying the room and the hall outside with an odd look on his face.

"What're you thinking?" G calls over at him. Jacqueline is standing off to the side, quietly talking on her cellphone, and doesn't look up.

"Come here," instructs Deeks, waving a hand in a vague motion.

G walks over and stands next to his temporary partner, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. "Ok, what's going on?"

"Look from right here around the room, then out in the hall."

If you ask G, this all seems like a cryptic waste of time, but something in Deeks's voice makes him do what he's told. As he stands there and looks across the room, then turns and looks out into and down the hall, he gets the beginning of an idea what Deeks is getting at.

From the doorway there is a clear and direct visual path to where Gallagher was first shot, on to his final falling place, then to the door, on through and right to the gaping maw of the doorless out of order elevator. A safety hazard, he muses, before he realizes what it is, exactly, Deeks is pitching to him by showing him this.

It had been something G wondered, how Gallagher's killers had gotten down ten floors in bloodied clothing without anyone noticing. And then the matter of the flash drive... Well. That would be one thing to do with it.

"We should call Nell and Eric."

"Ask them to look into the elevator maintenance crew? Yeah," Deeks says, nodding. "Also, I don't know how you feel about heights, but..."

"The flash drive could be in there," G agrees. He turns and beckons Jacqueline back over. "Do you know if the maintenance crew left any of their rappelling gear around here?" he asks her.

"They're still working up in the fifteenth floor, so if there's any gear, it'll be up there," she says, confused and mildly alarmed. "You're not... You aren't planning to go down the elevator shaft, are you?" Her voice takes on such an incredulous tone that Jacqueline sounds like she can hardly believe she's voiced such a clearly ludicrous suggestion.

Deeks looks to G, then back to Jacqueline, and nods. "Absolutely."

Jacqueline stares back at him as if he's just suggested they BASE jump off the roof of the building, then shakes her head, sends a glance heavenward, and takes the lead off towards the pile of equipment left by the repair crew in a tented off section of the fifteenth floor. She leaves them to it then, presumably headed off to inform her boss about the two Agency operatives with questionable judgement planning to climb down their elevator shaft, and G and Deeks are left with a pile of rappelling equipment between them and the empty maw of an elevator-less elevator shaft off to the side.

"We should check in," Deeks says looking dubiously down at the equipment, then over at the opening.

"Good idea," G agrees. He's no more enthused about the prospect of climbing down the dark, foreboding elevator shaft than Deeks is, but there is a mutual, unspoken urgency in the air, a grim reminder that if the flash drive really is in the building still, Gallagher's killer will want to retrieve it quickly. They don't want to be caught off-guard, in the vulnerable position of hanging suspended in empty air.

When they switch on their comms units and G speaks a greeting, the slightly tinny voice of Nell responds almost immediately.

"Good to hear from you two, we were starting to get worried it took you so long to check in." It's clear from the edge to her voice that she isn't teasing them. She and the others back in LA really had been worried. Usually it'd take a much longer stretch of radio silence and several missed calls, but this case, this day... It's anything but usual. It makes perfect sense that nerves would be ramped up on high alert.

"Are Sam and Kensi back yet?" G asks. There's a faint shuffling sound and two clicks as two more headsets tune into the frequency.

"Right here, G." Sam.

"Is Deeks with you?" Kensi too.

"Hey Kens," chimes in Deeks. "I'm about to climb down a big dark scary hole that goes down like fifteen stories."

"Excuse me."

G decides to count Kensi's mastering of the flat, affectless voice as a skill learned through prolonged exposure to all sorts of Deeks's shenanigans. For his own part, he rolls his eyes and glares at the blond man grinning at him, then clarifies for the sake of those not present.

"We're at Jamie Gallagher's workplace," he says, hoping nobody will make a big deal out of the odd way he's taken to referring to the dead analyst. "We've got a theory about how our bad guy got away, and where he might have stashed the flash drive. Unfortunately, it involves an empty elevator shaft that me and Deeks get to climb down, thanks to the repair guys leaving their rappelling gear lying around."

"That sounds dangerous," Sam hedges.

"We don't really have any other choice." As he speaks, G stoops down to begin sorting through the pile of ropes, pulleys, and buckles on the floor.

"Get anything useful so far?"

"We met his supervisor, a woman named Jacqueline Lovett, she said Admiral Gallagher's never been in the building, and she didn't see anything yesterday," Deeks says, threading his fingers through the straps of a harness to disentangle the leg loops. It doesn't look hugely steady, but he's been in enough of these to know it's safer than it looks.

"And how'd you decide climbing down an elevator shaft was a great idea?"

"There's a spot in the doorway where you can directly see where he was killed, and if you turn around it's a straight shot to the empty shaft. If somebody wanted to, say, murder a guy and get out really quickly, and possibly stash a stolen flash drive, well..."

The two harnesses they pull from the tangle of straps and buckles are the same size, which is 'slightly smaller than Deeks would really prefer'. Being smaller than Deeks in build and stature by just enough to count, G fits into it better than Deeks does. On advice from Sam – taking into consideration the possibility that if the flash drive isthere, someone may come back for it, and they may be armed – G is wearing his vest under the harness. It's a snug fit, and not exactly comfortable, but it eases everyone's minds to have him wearing it.

Unfortunately, Deeks is just enough bigger than G that his doesn't fit, and he can sense the tension increase when he announces he'll have to leave his behind. He feels vulnerable and exposed, next to G, knowing that if someone shoots at him right now, there's nothing between him and a bullet but a maroon t-shirt.

They decide to take it five floors at a time, one after the other. Deeks loses the initial rock paper scissors, and starts down first, G looking down over him with a flashlight playing across the crevices of the empty elevator shaft. Reaching the bottom, Deeks sends the rappelling hook back up to G, keeping an eye on him from below and looking for anything they may be missing. G is only about ten feet up when Deeks sees the glint of metal on the underside of a piece of rebar. He squints at it, not noticing the man who has appeared at the end of the long corridor he stands in, peering up the shaft.

"Hey, I think I see the flash drive," Deeks yells up, and the only warning he gets before the gunshot sounds down the hall is a muffled curse word from the newly arrived stranger.

Feeling his heart lurch up into his throat, pounding madly, Deeks slams his back to the alcove where the elevator doors would have been, fumbling around for his own gun. The longer the footsteps sound down the hall, approaching his hiding spot, the more frantically he tries to get his gun free from the restrictive, unfamiliar straps of the harness. G, having heard the shot ring out, crosses the gap between him and Deeks swiftly, skidding to a halt on the carpet, wobbling a little before gaining his balance.

The next moments pass in a blur. The mysterious gunman is almost right on top of them, Deeks still can't get his sidearm out, and he is acutely aware of his lack of a vest. Seemingly out of nowhere, G grabs him by the straps of the harness, spinning him around towards the empty mouth of the elevator shaft. With a slight tugging sensation, G releases the harness and gives him a solid shove to the center mass of his chest, sending Deeks sprawling backwards into empty air, plummeting the shaft with nothing to grab onto to halt the descent.

Above him, from the opening, Deeks hears the sharp, cracking report of three rapid gunshots, then silence and the whistle of air as he falls. With a sudden, jarring jolt at the straps of the harness, the rope he hadn't even noticed G clipping to the front ring brings an abrupt end to Deeks' free fall, and he swings to the side of the shaft, slamming into the side of the structure. A burst of pain explodes in his left side, concentrated at his hip and his shoulder. His head snaps into the wall, and all he sees are stars.


	8. Too Many Pieces To Mend

Again, it's... well, obviously, it's late. I hope you like it, though. It took me a while to get through this one. I wanted to get it right.

Happy holidays everybody! I hope you're having a nice winter.

* * *

The Art Of Lost Causes

Dark Blue 'Verse - Part Two: The Boiling Point

Chapter Eight

 _It's not safe here anymore,_  
 _there's too much damage to ignore._  
 _I've spun in circles, I'm confused._  
 _If no one wins, does no one lose?_  
 _We never learned to bend,_  
 _so we break and break again._  
 _And now we're broken in._  
 _Too many pieces to mend._

 _"Too Many To Mend", Libby Weaver_

* * *

After the first gunshot nobody is sure what they've heard. After the other three, though, there's no doubt what's happened. The sound of the shots, followed by a reverberating thud and an involuntary cry of pain, has Sam and Kensi jumping up out of their chairs, despite being several hundred miles from the source of the frightening sounds.

"G!" Sam shouts into his earpiece. "Deeks!" There is no way to tell what has just happened based only off that set of sounds, which has petered off now, into a disturbing, unnerving silence.

"What happened?" Kensi asks, unable to keep threads of panic from seeping into her voice.

This is the point at which Hetty walks in, appraisingly sweeping her eyes around the room.

"What's going on?" she asks, forgoing small talk and directly addressing Sam and Kensi, who are wearing identical looks of fear. As Sam continues to try and get and a response out of their radio silent partners, Kensi answers Hetty in clipped, anxious words.

"We were on comms with Deeks and Callen," she says, heart pounding against her sternum. "Deeks thought he found the missing flash drive. There were gunshots, and we heard what sounded like someone making a really fast impact into something very hard. We don't know who was involved with what, and neither of them have said a word since."

Just as it looks like Hetty is about to say something, the comms lines connecting ops to G and Deeks seems to explode in commotion. A burst of violent coughing, deep and gasping, tears out from one man, a string of... creative swearing from the other. Based on that, it is easy to pinpoint who's done what.

"Thanks for your input, Deeks," Kensi says, turning away from Hetty and focusing on the audio link.

"Where's G? What's going on? Why isn't he saying anything?"

It sounds like Deeks groans in response to Sam's rapid fire trio of questions, and the other person's coughing – G's coughing – ramps up to a new level.

"Has he been shot? G, were you shot?"

"Yeah." It's the first word G has managed to gasp out the entire time, and while it's good to hear his voice, Sam is in no way reassured by what he's said.

The coughing continues while Deeks's irritated, pained voice chimes in.

"He's wearing a vest, I think they just got that. I didn't see what – ah, shit, ow – I didn't see what happened. He's got a vest, I don't. So he pushed me down the freaking elevator shaft. I hit the wall pretty hard and it hurts like hell but I don't think I broke anything."

Relief washes over Kensi and she mouths 'thank god'. She hopes Deeks is right and the bullets only caught G in the vest. He's given them enough scares with bullet holes, thank you very much.

"G, were you hit anywhere other than your vest?" The urgency in Sam's voice has hardly dimmed with the knowledge that G is still alive and – if still breathless and coughing – capable of speech.

"No," comes the hoarse reply moments later. "Three shots. All caught the vest."

"How's your breathing?" It's a relief to know the vest has served its purpose, but Sam isn't fully satisfied.

"How do you think?" The answer spat in G's irritated voice has the impact taken out of it by the coughing fit that comes over the comms link seconds later.

Deeks's snickering filters through his mic, though there's a bit of distortion that makes Kensi wonder if the elevator shaft is interfering with the signal, or if maybe the fall and impact has damaged his earwig.

With a clearing of her throat, Hetty takes over the conversation.

"What's the situation?" she asks, clearly addressing G and Deeks.

"Well, G is up on the tenth floor," comes Deeks's input, sounding like he's talking through gritted teeth. "He took three to the vest. I'm honestly not sure which floors I'm... hanging outbetween, but I banged up my hip, shoulder, and head pretty bad. That said, I don't think it's necessarily concussion bad and I didn't break anything."

"The shooter?" Hetty asks, moving along brusquely.

"I only got a brief look at his face when he shot me," says G, still sounding a little out of breath, but way better than the last time he tried to talk. "Just one guy, though. White. Tall. Didn't seem to really know what he was doing with a gun. That's all I've got. He showed up right when Deeks yelled something about the flash drive so I'm thinking this was our guy."

"Do you think we can maybe get me out of here." Deeks's voice is more than a little peeved, and Kensi feels a laugh bubble up on her chest at the thought that Deeks has been hanging suspended in midair this entire time.

Getting Deeks out of the elevator shaft is a slow, difficult process. However difficult it is for Sam and Kensi to stand there and listen to them struggle and not be able to help, it is even more difficult for the two injured parties currently attempting the extraction to actually carry out.

When the man had started shooting, the building was swiftly evacuated, leaving nobody but G around to help Deeks out of the hole. With G's damaged chest courtesy of three close range gunshots and Deeks's general banged up state, it's not easy going. By the time G reaches down to grab Deeks's hand and pull him completely upright, Deeks is pretty sure he might have been wrong about that concussion thing.

It takes even longer to finally retrieve the flash drive. If Sam and Kensi'd had their way, they wouldn't have gone after it at all, not injured as they are, but a sharp look and an order from Hetty overrides any objection hardly before it can even be made.

It's also Hetty's urging that sees a reluctant Nell attempting to talk G through decrypting the flash drive. It's been thoroughly pointed out by Nell, Eric, G himself, and everybody else within earshot, that G really doesn't possess the technological know-how to crack this level of coded encryption, but Hetty is having none of it.

No, instead of doing what has been suggested and heading to the nearest emergency room, G is sitting at one of the tenth floor computer stations and listening to Nell's incredibly patient voice in his ear, while Deeks headed downstairs to talk to the security team probably about to storm the building. Splitting them up even further is yet another move against popular advisement, Hetty overriding Kensi and Sam's safety related objections.

"Now enter Ops Analyst Gallagher's code and see if that works," Nell says in a slightly muffled voice.

Looking over at her, Eric sees that she has dropped her face onto her folded arms in defeat. They've tried several of the less complex cracking methods and everything is coming up blank. Eric is glad he isn't the one Hetty asked to talk G through this because while he is helping from the periphery, the brunt of Hetty's impatient frustration isn't falling on his shoulders.

Not too much later, as Hetty's fuse burns shorter and shorter, Eric feels bad for thinking that.

Everyone has been stretched thin on this case, tempers running hot and patience wearing out, but it's Nell that Eric is now worried about. It's hard enough to try and crack a code under pressure, but talking another, far more inexperienced person through it from a couple hundred miles away, while Hetty Lange breathes down your neck... It's nigh on impossible, even without factoring in the level of encryption on the drive itself.

Sam and Kensi's consistent presence in the room throws a who other factor into play, on top of all that. From his place sort of on the periphery of everything that's happening, Eric can practically see the tension ratcheting up the longer they all crowd around Nell. He is just on the border of suggesting maybe they should all back off and give her some space when Hetty gets the jump on his idea.

"Mr Hanna," she snaps, after turning sharply and running into Sam. The room gets uncomfortably quiet, Eric and Nell watching the stiff postured trio of Sam, Kensi, and Hetty standing in the center of the room.

"Your job is not to stand around here and watch them do theirs. I trust you have other things you could be doing, Sam?"

It looks as if Sam is about to answer, going so far as to open his mouth, but Hetty cuts him off abruptly before he even gets the chance to speak.

"Then please, go work on them. You as well, Kensi. Neither of you are doing Nell or Mr Callen any good standing around here hovering."

Sam and Hetty stare at each other for a long, harsh moment while Kensi watches, then Sam turns away, concentrating on his ear piece.

"You're doing great, G," he says, shooting a quick, pointed look at Hetty when he says his partner's name. Then he walks brusquely out of the room, Kensi following close behind him.

There's something in that action, the way Sam says G's name, the way he seems to almost be pointing it at Hetty, that sticks in Nell's mind.

Nell has seen the way the muscles of Sam's jaw clenches every time has spoken these last few days, his hands shaking just the slightest bit as his fingers tighten into fists at his sides every time Hetty says those words, Mr Callen.

There's a near anger in the way Sam says G's name, when he and Hetty are standing toe to toe and Nell wonders if there's finally going to be a confrontation of sorts, if maybe all of this built up tension and pressure will finally explode. She wonders who, if any of them, will be left standing in the aftermath.

When she walks G through the next code strategy, Nell is still thinking about names and voices, and a question hovers at the edge of her tongue for minutes before she asks it. It is only when Hetty steps out of the room to take care of something or other, and Eric excuses himself from his work on the phone numbers, that the opportunity presents itself, and she jumps upon it before she can find it in herself to think better of what it is she is about to do.

"Hey, uh," she says in a hesitant voice. "I. You never said and I never asked but- What do you want me to call you?"

"Excuse me?" The response is shocked and confused.

"Your, uh. Your name. I never asked which you preferred and, I mean. Which do you want me to call you? Callen or... or G?" It comes out in stilted speech, halting and awkward, like it's a question Nell doesn't know if she is allowed to ask him.

His answer, when it comes, is similarly broken up, as if unsure if he's allowed to tell the truth.

"...G," he says finally, in a tight voice, like it's a plea, like it's a confession. "Call me G."

"Alright, G," Nell agrees, feeling something in her ribcage loosen.

The question and subsequent answer seems to lend a kind of peace to the further dialogue between Nell and G. Not so much as to relieve the burden of the circumstances entirely, but enough that, for a few minutes at least, those perhaps most effected by the turmoil with Hetty, those her unpredictable behavior has come down hardest on, can breathe easily. It doesn't last for long, Eric coming back from the bathroom and Hetty approaching up the stairs, but Nell things to herself that she has never in her life been so grateful for a break.

If anything, though, the scarce moments away from Hetty's harsh presence only serves to magnify it upon her return. As the minute hand inches around the face of the clock mounted on the wall, tracking just how long they've been at this, Hetty grows increasingly more impatient. It seems to Nell like Hetty has come somehow under the misguided notion that she and G have yet to crack the encryption on the drive because they've chosen not to, rather than the obvious and truthful conclusion that this is top level Navy encryption, and smart though G Callen may be, he's never possessed a great deal of finesse with computers, and his only help is hundreds of miles away, blindly coaching him through an earpiece.

The situation gets almost to the point of Nell snapping and yelling at her boss to, in blunt terms, screw off and let her do her god forsaken job, sure to be an unforgivable mistake that would at the very least cost her that job, when Eric takes matters into his own faintly trembling hands. His solution comes in the form of a text message sent downstairs, opting to call in the big guns rather than try and diffuse this situation on his own.

"What do you mean there's nothing on the flash drive?" Hetty is in the process of asking in a frighteningly icy calm voice when Kensi and Sam reach the room. They remain in the doorway for a moment to take in what's going on before deciding if and how to intervene.

"I mean there's nothing on the flash drive!" Nell, on the other hand, is anything but any kind of calm. Her voice has hiked up a couple notches from its average pitch, and Eric is honestly not sure how close to the breaking point she is – indeed how close he himself is, just being in the same room as this mess. He's fairly sure neither Hetty nor Nell have noticed yet the presence of Kensi and Sam.

"Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me the two of you haven't just deleted what very well could be our motive, and at the least is a now-breached piece of highly guarded military data," Hetty says, voice climbing up in volume with every word.

"There's nothing there! There isn't anything there and there never was anything there!" There's an edge to Nell's insistence, and Hetty is about to continue, advancing towards the near-frantic young woman, when Kensi decides that this is it, enough is enough.

"Hetty," she shouts, side-stepping around a chair to plant herself firmly, protectively, in-between Hetty and Nell. "Back. The hell. Off. Right now."

It looks for a bout half a second like Hetty is gearing up to yell something in response, maybe remind Kensi just who exactly is in charge here, when Kensi jumps the gun and cuts her off.

"If you try and justify this or keep driving Nell into some kind of break down, I swear I will march downtown and bring Director Vance to this office myself to court marshal you for abuse of power, so help me God."

The fact that Hetty can't technically be court-martialed, and legal action against her would probably take some other term, is the farthest thing from Kensi's mind at that point, having gone with the first suitably strong-worded phrase that came to her. The immediate situation is far more demanding of her attention than a misuse of military phrasing.

Kensi is acutely, painfully aware that she has just crossed a line in the sand, and everybody knows it. She has done something there is no coming back from, exposed their hand to Hetty. She can sense Nell behind her, however, and she knows it was worth it. That's why they're doing this, after all, isn't it? To protect people from Hetty.

Seconds tick past as Kensi and Hetty stare each other down hard, neither willing to back down first. Luckily it doesn't come to that, because it's exactly that moment that Eric's computer pings, and he turns to it, thanking every deity he can think of and reading the message on the screen.

All attention is on him when he reads off the message, relief rolling through him.

"Those numbers on Admiral Gallagher's phone – we finally got who they belong to."


End file.
